Response Specificity

Introduction

This paper is the second in a series dealing with the phenomena of physiological response stereotypy in psychosomatic patients. The first paper (Engel, 1960) reported that a group of normal subjects, when presented with several stimuli, will respond with a pattern of physiological responses which are in part a function of the evoking stimulus (stimulus-response or SR specificity), and in part a function of the responding individual (individual-response or IR specificity). In this paper we will extend these results and compare the response patterns of normal subjects to the response patterns of patients with "essential hypertension." The importance of response-specificities for psychosomatic processes has been discussed by Alexander (1950). His theory of specificity—"physiological responses to emotional stimuli . . . vary according to the nature of the precipitating emotional state. . . . Every emotional state has its own physiological syndrome." (p. 68)—seems to acknowledge the existence